Almost over!

Hey everyone, we got back from our ten day trip yesterday. We only have THREE days left here, and this is our last night with real internet access. The next two days will be spent in Taipei, back in Taipei Hero House (台北國軍英雄館). The third day is the day of travel! Our plane for Tokyo leaves Taipei at 10:00 AM. We will actually leave Tokyo at 4 pm, and arrive at Dulles at 3:35 pm. You know what that means. We arrive before we even left. TIME TRAVEL!


Making mochi! Called muaji in Chinese. You have to pound the glutinous rice, and wet it and turn it and keep pounding it with the mallet until it becomes the right texture. It's very sticky, but so very delicious!!


This is the tea we made at the same place . We had to crush the peanuts and black sesame seeds and various unknown things. It turned out to be more of a paste than tea, and they iced it so it was very cold. It reminded us of a Starbucks drink. It was pretty tasty, but a bit too powerful and we couldn't drink that much of it.


In Asia, being really tan is a sign of being poor. So some women go to any length to protect themselves from the sun. Carrying around umbrellas and wearing pants and long sleeves even in this intense heat are the most common, but occasionally you see something on this level. She looked like she would blend in in a Star Wars movie.


Madz, Kelly, and Priscilla at the Yeh Liu (野柳) National Park. It's famous for its "hoodoo stones" that are named for things they look like.


Da Xiong (大熊) with a rock that looks like a chicken leg.


Panoramic of a beach we went to.


Madz and Kelly at the top of a tower after hiking up a mountain (something we did A LOT) in Taroko National Park (太魯閣國家公園).


This little island was called Sansiantai Island (三仙台島). In the picture, we're standing on a curved bridge of stairs, of which there were eight in a row (eight is a lucky number, but it wasn't kind on the legs.) This picture looks really surreal.


It was just going CRAZY!


Priscilla running through a water maze at the National Museum of Prehistory (國立台灣史前文化博物館)! The museum wasn't that great, but they had a "dancing water fountain" show and a playground outside, as well as this.


Madz and Priscilla after the biking trip in Guanshan (關山). The counselors made the endeavor sound pretty terrifying: 12 km (about 7.5 mi), "all uphill," and apparently every year someone breaks something. However, it was really fun! (We all survived by the way.) Early on, it started sprinkling, and by the time we got to the halfway 6 km point, it was pouring down on us. So the counselors made us wait until it lightened up a bit. We had ponchos but the rain was so intense everyone was soaked anyway. This is us post-soakage.


Going through rocky passages in Sheding Nature Park (社頂自然公園) in Kenting (墾丁).


While walking through the Liuho Night Market (六合夜市), we couldn't quite help but notice this. No idea what's really going on here, seems like a crazy version of karaoke. Might have been a promotion for some musical artist (not this guy though).


We also went to Fo Guang Shan Monastery (佛光山). One of the coolest parts of this visit was eating lunch-- this room can seat 3,000, but there were "only" 1,000 people eating that day. It was a unique experience, as you are required to eat in silence.


The giant Buddha of the monastery. After taking this picture, Madz's camera said, "Blink eye detected." Hahaha.


"Planting our roots in Taiwan"! Kind of cheesy, but very sweet. It means we have to come back and see how our trees have grown.


Tonight was our closing ceremony. After watching a slideshow of all the pictures the counselors had taken of us, we got stamps with our names on it! These stamps are used for letters as well as official documents, sort of like a signature. It was very thoughtful as these are generally pricey in America. This is Priscilla's (her Chinese name of course).

This will be our LAST BLOG POST EVER! We are only spending three more nights here (and it's almost bedtime) and then we will be back home! Thanks for following this blog, I hope you've seen some interesting things and didn't miss us too much :] See you all soon!

Caucasian Sightings: 78

Halfway there yo

We saw a TGIF's and we just couldn't resist. After two weeks of Chinese food we wanted some tasty yumyums that reminded us of America. Loaded potato skins...mmm!

The next day we painted Chinese opera masks. Before we started I decided that I wanted to be a rebel and make the mask look like a Na'vi. It didn't work, and it looked frightening. The teacher also said that a blue face in Chinese opera means that character is a bad guy! Here's the finished product. I still think it's scary.

On Tuesday we visited the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village and Sun Moon Lake Ropeway.
Cable cars!

In this photo a couple from the Amis, one of 14 recognized aboriginal tribes in Taiwan, welcomes us in a performance at the culture village.

Inside the culture village, there was a mini amusement park. We went on Space Mountain three times.
Here's the view of Sun Moon Lake from the seventh floor of our hotel at 5 AM.

A panoramic taken by Madz.
The next morning we visited the temple across from our hotel. We took a picture with this cool soldier dude in gold at the temple entrance.

It started raining while we walked up the mountain on our Sun Moon Lake tour. Me and Kelly poncho-ing it up.
On Thursday we learned how to make paper fans not far from the Sun Moon Lake area. First we placed paper on an engraved stone tablet (ours had Pikachu on it :p) and dampened it with water. Then we placed sheets of paper on top and pounded it with a brush until the paper wasn't moist anymore.

This is what our fans looked like after blotting them with ink.

Madz cleaning up the edges of her fan after gluing the sides together.

After making our fans we observed the process of making paper.

In the afternoon we visited the National Museum of Natural Science.
At the museum, this man showed us a cool pottery presentation.

Two of our counselors, Ma Que (麻雀), on the left, and Da Xiong (大熊), on the right.

In the evening we went to Feng Jia Night Market, which is famous for Taiwanese delicacies like stinky tofu (ew ha) and tea eggs.

Madz and Kelly eating sweet potato fries with suan mei (酸梅). Yum.

For the next two weeks we'll be touring around the rest of Taiwan, so we might not get internet.

Caucasian sightings: 48

Taichung part 2

So, we haven't blogged in a few days because we've only been doing arts and crafts in the morning, with Mandarin classes in the afternoon.

My second day of Mandarin class, I asked my teacher to give me a name, and she did! It is Mei Di, (美蒂) which means beautiful doll. The counselors all love it because now they have something to call me besides Madz (which they absolutely can't say). It's funny, I guess because I'm the only white girl, they suddenly all know my name and call it all the time. I'm easy to recognize and remember now.


Our of our crafts was painting fans! Madz left, Priscilla right. Yay for bamboo.


We also painted lanterns. Priscilla's is so beauuutiful! She got hers to look like the teacher's.


The second day, we learned some tai chi moves! Maybe another day I'll post a video of it... I still remember the routine but I don't have any shots of us doing it.

We also made Doraemon dough figures, which we forgot to take pictures of D: here is a link to a picture of Doraemon: http://www.japanprobe.com/2007/01/doraemon.jpg


Third day, we learned some Chinese songs (I highly recommend "Bao Be" by Zhang Xuan). We also made these really pretty flowers out of Chinese knots, but they were crazy difficult to do, and a really good way to drive someone insane.


The next day, we made Dragon's Beard candy, called Long Xu (龍鬚糖) in Chinese. Basically, you have to stretch the sugar until it becomes fine strands. This was another very difficult project.


This is Kelly with her final product, looking proud.


The work of the professional. Inside are crushed peanuts or black sesame seeds. It tasted alright but we all felt the flour used on the sugar overpowered the other flavors.


The next day, we made fish out of weaving grass. It's so cute!


The best part is you can use the spine of the grass to use as a fishing wire.... haha.


We also made pinwheels out of grass.


Since today is Saturday, we didn't have class and we didn't have morning crafts either. Instead we went to the 921 Earthquake Museum of Taiwan (921地震教育園區). It was physically centered around a middle school that had collapsed during the earthquake, and was constructed to show the devastation that followed. Here is one of the school buildings (real, not a model).


The best counselor ever, Ma Que, on the right, and Sheryl on the left, another one of our group's counselors.


After we went to the Museum, we went to the famous town of Lugang (鹿港). This place was mix of temples, old style homes, shops, and food stalls. This was one of the first things we saw, a floating faucet!


Lugang is also famous for its narrow streets, called Gentlemens' Walkways (or something like that), because as it is so difficult for people to pass each other, men should let the women go first so as to not push up against them. This walkway became at least half the size later on, when we actually ran in to people ... and we therefore had to squish past them.

Caucasian Sightings: 32

Taichung

We are no longer in Taipei! We will be staying at Asia University (亞洲大學) in the city of Taichung (台中) for the next week or so as we take our Mandarin classes.


The beds here are INCREDIBLY high off the ground, about 6-7ft. It was pretty intimidating at first but after two nights here it seems completely normal. While there is wireless internet here, it is not very reliable. Also, something I did not expect of Taiwan: there is not air conditioning everywhere all the time. For example, the dorms here only have AC from 6pm-7am. You don't want to hang out here during the day, and when you wake up in the morning it's pretty uncomfortable.


The whitemen are the guardian of tooth!


Asia University is 40 minutes away from the downtown city. Here is a shot of the wide array of shops (through the bus window).


The department store here is famous for it's size (it spans three buildings, with 19 floors each). However, it also is known for each floor having a different style of bathroom. Fireplace! We didn't look at all of them, but this was our favorite style. (As you can imagine, the clothes in this store were expensive.)


We love Engrish! Everything is really cheap here in Taiwan. To give you an idea, I bought a pair of earrings, pants, and a headband for roughly 10 US dollars total. I LOVE IT. A meal can often cost under $3. It's just wonderful.


I love the World Series Poker! Wait...


Perhaps the highlight of our day was eating at the famous restaurant, Modern Toilet. Perhaps you can pick up on the theme...


You sit on toilet seats! The table is glass over ceramic sinks.


Priscilla got a hot pot, shaped like a toilet. Madz got gratin, shaped like a bathtub. Kelly got pasta, shaped like a sink.


The ice cream! Actually looks like poo in a bowl the shape of a squat-toilet. (I hope no one has had to experience using one of those in real life.)


Even the sinks in the bathroom were toilets.


Most people travel by scooter. That mountain of trash was somehow attached to one. We were extremely impressed by the endeavor. (The man was able to move forward, albeit somewhat slowly.)


Apple milk! Looks delicious, was delicious.


An attempt at a panoramic shot of the view from Asia University. Not sure why the edge is black. Click the picture for a better view (that works with all the pictures by the way).





I never knew this before, but apparently Taiwan's trash pickup system works like so: basically, the truck plays the song, and you can hear it a couple neighborhoods over, so you have to get your trash ready. Then, as it passes, you have to run after it and throw your trash in. It's hilarious and cute, and incredibly Asian. Here is a short clip to show you the song.




This is our counselor, Ma Que (麻雀), and she is the most hilarious person I've ever met. This is her doing our "cheer" for our group (Group 4). Group 4 consists of kids form Texas Canada and Washington D.C., so the cheer that she is saying goes, "Texas," "Canada," "DC," some random noise we don't understand, and then "What do you want to add?" The thing she does during the random noise is the dance for boys. So, Priscilla asks, "What do the girls do?" And Ma Que demonstrates at the very end. She's so adorable and I'm pretty sure everyone in our group is in love with her.


Caucasian Sightings: 26